This invention relates to a gas burning apparatus which conducts gas to a combustion zone in a highly efficient and desirable manner.
Gas burners have been employed for a variety of applications including the heating of water and other liquids for various industrial applications as well as home uses, i.e. wherein water is heated for washing, bathing and other purposes. Many gas burners have been mounted below large liquid containing tanks while other structures have placed gas burners below water conducting heating coils for providing, in both instances, a heat exchanging operation. In such structures, radiant and convection heat provided by the burning mixture of gas and air increases the temperature of the structure containing the liquid thereby increasing the liquid temperature which, in turn, may be pumped or otherwise transferred for storage in containers or for direct use.
Some burners have employed an annularly shaped tubular ring having a plurality of annularly spaced openings for conducting gas and possibly pre-mixed air to the combustion zone generally spaced above the ring.
Other burners have employed a large continuous screen such as the circumferentially shaped screen employed in the U.S. Pat. No. 1,247,740 to Sutton. A continuous large type screen may experience hot spots whenever there is a non-uniform or uneven velocity of the gas flowing through the screen resulting in breaks within the screening material. The cracks further unbalance gas flow which increases the danger of flashback through the cracks into the gas conducting channel whenever the gas velocity is less than the burning rate of the flame. This occurs at the beginning and end of each normal cycle firing and might possibly damage the gas distributor and particularly further damage the screen.
Where a gas burner is intermittently lighted and cooled in a cyclic manner as in many common water heating systems, a rigidly retained perforated screen has been found to readily buckle or wrinkle due to the resulting cyclic expansion and contraction thereof. Such screen distortion due to cyclic expansion and contraction increases the likelihood of cracks developing due to metal fatigue.
Many prior burning units have required a relatively large size screen and combustion chamber in order to develop the necessary heat energy for adequately heating the liquid where demand requirements for the heated liquid are quite large. Such a large screen has been found to readily warp particularly where cyclic gas burning sequences have been required.
Many burners have employed a large gas supplying continuous screen which is also associated with a large gas conducting channel or chamber which has sometimes produced sound resonance in response to the gas flame thereby providing an undesirable audio sound which is highly distracting and renders such a unit commercially undesirable.